How much has MMOs negatively impacted other genres in PC gaming?

[01101010]

You are kind of dismissing the whole modding community, Its the first thing that sticks out when you compare Fallout / Oblivion / Dragon Age between platforms. Also, the dumbed down combat game in Dragon Age shows that PC games would have added value if the developers wouldn't go for the "one size fits all" method of game development.

Good point. Since consoles are taking over for numerous reasons, companies seem to be focusing on that side and having the basement trolls toil with porting it to PC and a ton of functions either don't fit and are hamfisted into the game, or the functions are so outrageously bad that it makes the game near unplayable. While I never really saw this effect in FFXI, after playing MMOs since, going back to it - I can say it truly is unkind in the PC interface dept, but playing with a 360 controller is actually not as bad as I once railed against. 

[Draegan]

MMOGs sometimes have cut into my single gaming.  Until about a year ago I only played MMOGs on a regular basis and buying the big games every once in a while.

Now I'm trying to re-expand my horizons a little bit and not be stuck on one game.  I'm actually getting better at playing multiple games at the same time.

[01101010]

Thinking about this a tad more, I'd say the gaming community is in the aftermath of MMOs at this point. The high water mark is becoming more noticeable which each passing failure of a game. Now we talk about niche games more than MMOs. I'd say that as MMOs slide further down the slope, single player games will fill the void if they haven't already... of course that's to say nothing about the new breed of single player games with the multiplayer option. 

And as ever, I am always impressed with people (under the age of 50) that DON'T actually play ANY video games at all.

[Malakili]

Thinking about this a tad more, I'd say the gaming community is in the aftermath of MMOs at this point. The high water mark is becoming more noticeable which each passing failure of a game. Now we talk about niche games more than MMOs. I'd say that as MMOs slide further down the slope, single player games will fill the void if they haven't already... of course that's to say nothing about the new breed of single player games with the multiplayer option. 

And as ever, I am always impressed with people (under the age of 50) that DON'T actually play ANY video games at all.

Well, is the dichotomy really MMO v. Single player?  A game like Diablo 3 could come in and attract millions of people easy.  We shouldn't leave out good old fashioned multiplayer.  In fact, I expect to see that sort of model grow again.  Look at something like global agenda, it calls itself an MMO I guess, but its much closer to just  multiplayer game with some persistent world mechanics.

[Draegan]

Thinking about this a tad more, I'd say the gaming community is in the aftermath of MMOs at this point. The high water mark is becoming more noticeable which each passing failure of a game. Now we talk about niche games more than MMOs. I'd say that as MMOs slide further down the slope, single player games will fill the void if they haven't already... of course that's to say nothing about the new breed of single player games with the multiplayer option. 

And as ever, I am always impressed with people (under the age of 50) that DON'T actually play ANY video games at all.

I would disagree.  More and more games are coming out with mainly online components and are become more and more popular.  What you're seeing is the decline of the shitty DIKU games that are coming out.  Not sure what you mean by failure either.  The only two failures I can think of in the last few years were AOC and WAR, and AOC bounced back a small tad. 

[Malakili]

Thinking about this a tad more, I'd say the gaming community is in the aftermath of MMOs at this point. The high water mark is becoming more noticeable which each passing failure of a game. Now we talk about niche games more than MMOs. I'd say that as MMOs slide further down the slope, single player games will fill the void if they haven't already... of course that's to say nothing about the new breed of single player games with the multiplayer option. 

And as ever, I am always impressed with people (under the age of 50) that DON'T actually play ANY video games at all.

I would disagree.  More and more games are coming out with mainly online components and are become more and more popular.  What you're seeing is the decline of the shitty DIKU games that are coming out.  Not sure what you mean by failure either.  The only two failures I can think of in the last few years were AOC and WAR, and AOC bounced back a small tad. 

Depends on how we are defining "failure" probably.  If its "didn't live up to the hype" its probably every game since WoW.  If its "closed or literally could be closed any time now" its far, far smaller.

[01101010]

Depends on how we are defining "failure" probably.  If its "didn't live up to the hype" its probably every game since WoW.  If its "closed or literally could be closed any time now" its far, far smaller.

Sorry, yes I was speaking about the failure of meeting expectations.

[UnSub]

You are kind of dismissing the whole modding community, Its the first thing that sticks out when you compare Fallout / Oblivion / Dragon Age between platforms.

In the majority of cases, developers really don't care about the modding community. Apart from a few true break-outs, mods bring very little back to the developer.

Now, they may add more to the game / community around the game, but that's not really what developers think about when considering if the title they just spent 3 years developing is going to let them keep their job.

[Venkman]

Exactly. Modding started way too early in PC games to get retroactively monetized like all the creative business models behind "free" games and experiences nowadays. So modding is a nice value add for those few self sufficient developers still being run by core gamers. It's the same thing with dedicated servers. These are throwbacks to a bygone era

MMOs don't take as much money from other games as they do sheer time. But they have the same impact any large launch has on competitive marketplaces. Look at the sales of any title that had the misfortune of being stocked within the first four months of any new Blizzard launch, for example. Or the decline in new sales on XBLA when MW2 launched.

Take WoW out of the equation though and on the PC side things are more in parity. But then add back in all the emerging stuff on social networking sites, and here is where you'll see the great divergence between consoles and PCs. And why most of the conventions of late have spent so much mindshare on talking about it.

Consoles are good for one thing. And that's great. Because you can get a lot more experience for a lot less overall money. But when people talk about PC gaming being dead, what they're only talking about is the end of PC games having brick and mortar retail relevance, in a digital age.

[tgr]

Consoles are good for one thing. And that's great. Because you can get a lot more experience for a lot less overall money. But when people talk about PC gaming being dead, what they're only talking about is the end of PC games having brick and mortar retail relevance, in a digital age.

Not quite. I'm saying PC gaming is dead (or dying) is the fact that most PC games released today usually have a strong case of the consoleitis. i.e. its UI is strongly influenced by the console pad, the gameplay is dumbed down, etc etc etc. And they're ruining games even harder with the creeping online-required "feature".

I don't really think the whole digital distribution is a major problem, it's 50% how the games are designed these days, and 50% how they try to protect their games  (i.e. fuck the gamers over in blatant ways) that pisses me off.

[Venkman]

You're talking digital distribution as the subset of the industry still delivering AAA games to PCs. On that side of things, you are right. PCs get AAA games mostly when they're relatively easy to port over from a predominantly X360 development environment (of course there are a few exceptions, including from companies that print money).

But I'm talkiing "digital" in the form of Flash and social networking games, only some of which ever make it to the digital storefronts that are the console distribution channels. These don't make PCs relevant to gamers, but PCs are far from dead as a gaming platform. They're just for a different type (and measure) of mass market.